The Foundation

“I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.” –Thomas Jefferson

Political Futures

“On Sunday night Jon Huntsman told his advisers that he is ending his presidential campaign and will endorse Mitt Romney. … Huntsman had criticized Romney repeatedly during the campaign, and with a note of bitterness if I am not mistaken; he made the accurate point that Romney’s tax plan is much more timid than his own. Huntsman finished third in New Hampshire, but most of his votes came from self-identified Independents and Democrats, which are expected to be a smaller proportion of the primary electorate in South Carolina and most later contests. In my January 8 Examiner column I identified what I thought was the central weakness of Huntsman’s campaign: his tone was that of a moderate or even liberal Republican, critical of the party and its followers, while his policy proposals, at least on domestic issues, were solidly conservative. ‘The tension between the anti-conservative aura he gives off and his genuinely conservative positions seems to have left Huntsman between two stools and struggling to achieve the solid third place finish in New Hampshire that might plausibly give him a ticket to other states.’ Well, he got his third place finish in New Hampshire, but it wasn’t enough, give[n] his non-conservative aura, to make him a contender in South Carolina and beyond.” –political analyst Michael Barone

Should Huntsman have dropped out of the GOP race?

For the Record

“There are two stories coming out of New Hampshire. The big story is Mitt Romney. The bigger one is Ron Paul. … He got 21 percent in Iowa, 23 in New Hampshire, the only candidate other than Romney to do well with two very different electorates, one more evangelical and socially conservative, the other more moderate and fiscally conservative. Paul commands a strong, energetic, highly committed following. And he is unlike any of the other candidates. They’re out to win. He admits he doesn’t see himself in the Oval Office. They’re one-time self-contained enterprises aiming for the White House. Paul is out there to build a movement that will long outlive this campaign. Paul is less a candidate than a ‘cause,’ to cite his election-night New Hampshire speech. Which is why that speech was the only one by a losing candidate that was sincerely, almost giddily joyous. The other candidates had to pretend they were happy with their results. Paul was genuinely delighted with his, because, after a quarter-century in the wilderness, he’s within reach of putting his cherished cause on the map. Libertarianism will have gone from the fringes – those hopeless, pathetic third-party runs – to a position of prominence in a major party.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

Opinion in Brief

“Corporations seem to be the new villains for everyone to hate. And no candidate in recent memory quite invokes the corporate image as much as Mitt Romney. … [I]t turns out that he made his own fortune heading up a private equity firm that specialized in corporate takeovers. Bain Capital’s model was to identify underperforming companies; tighten or replace management; and make them profitable as quickly as possible – which often meant cutting jobs, at least initially. And since Romney and Bain are so closely identified, the implication is that Romney got rich by destroying jobs. … [S]ome people seem to think it’s immoral for Bain – and Romney – to make money if any jobs were lost. But is it really fair to blame Bain Capital or Mitt Romney? Not every takeover will be successful, and even the successful ones entail pain in the beginning.” –columnist Linda Chavez

Insight

“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.” –American economist Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993)

Faith & Family

“Doesn’t anybody get the connection between the social issues and economics issues? One candidate who does, Rick Santorum had the courage to link the two in a recent Iowa town hall meeting. (And before I go on, please, folks, I’m not endorsing him or anyone. I never do.) Here’s what Senator Santorum said: ‘Yes, [the election is] about growth and the economy, [but] it’s also about what is at the core of our country … faith and family. You can’t have a strong economy, you can’t have limited government if the family is breaking down and we don’t live good, moral, and decent lives.’ Precisely right. … If the nation’s current economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that a healthy economy cannot thrive in the midst of moral breakdown. Ethical failures on Wall Street, Main Street, and Capitol Hill put us into this mess we’re in today, as I’ve said many times before. … Do you think that crime rates, incarceration, low educational achievement, out of wedlock births, affect the economy and government spending? Of course they do, and the statistics prove this! If you want a healthy, thriving economy you’ve got to have a strong moral societal foundation.” –author Chuck Colson

Reader Comments

“It is regrettable that your ideal candidate be ‘a man of strong faith.’ Aside from the fact that the candidate need not be a male, strong faith in supernatural spirits, ghouls, gods, demons, and the like should be a red flag warning against a lack-of-touch with reality, and is particularly repugnant if said candidate believes he should use his office to impose his irrational beliefs on the rest of the nation.” –Marc

Editor’s Reply: Yes, that whole “endowed by our Creator” thing is a problem … for those who serve no higher universal order than the one they see in the mirror every morning. Regarding the use of “he,” that is only because the remaining candidates from whom the attributes were selected, are male.

“Alexander wrote of the ideal candidate, ‘he’ should be this or that. How about ‘she’?”

Editor’s Reply: Alexander noted “he” only because the remaining candidates, from whom these attributes were compiled, are male.

“As for Friday’s Digest story on Mitt Romney, he is just another revolting RINO, but I am prepared to hold my nose, suppress my gag reflex, and vote for him. This will give us a four-year period without a Marxist regime, during which we can search for a proper leader. Retired Gen. Petraeus and former UN Ambassador John Bolton come to mind.” –JP

“These attacks on Bain have pushed me towards Romney – I didn’t see that coming.” –Robert

“Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain is perhaps what this government needs most. There is so much waste in government, we need a hatchet man.” –Fred

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Today the once-noble Democrat Party has turned the wisdom of MLK, one of their most revered iconic figureheads, on its head. Perhaps King’s most remembered words are these: “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” However, Democrat Leftists now interpret this as, “I have a dream that my children will one day be judged by the color of their skin, not the content of their character.”

To read more of what Martin Luther King has come to symbolize for the Left, click here.

Government

“France joined the United States in the club of former triple-A credit risks [Friday], when Standard & Poor’s stripped the country of its top rating. Spain, Italy and six other euro-zone countries were also handed downgrades at the same time. Like the U.S. downgrade last summer, the rating changes themselves don’t tell the world or the markets anything they didn’t already know. S&P, as so often with ratings agencies, is following the market rather than moving it, and France’s looming downgrade was perhaps the worst-kept secret in finance. The biggest impact may be political, especially for the re-election chances of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Perhaps he can call President Obama for advice on how to blame his legislature. These pages have long argued for reducing the importance of the credit-ratings agencies, especially where their ratings are given an explicit role in law and regulation. But S&P’s sweeping downgrade does reflect the truth that Europe’s actions in trying to save the euro haven’t stemmed contagion. They’ve spread it. The EU has reacted to the debt crisis by having the stronger countries in the euro zone guarantee loans to the weaker ones. … The downgrade might do some good if it motivates Europe’s leaders to rethink this strategy, but we wouldn’t bet the MF Global portfolio on it.” –The Wall Street Journal

Did S&P’s European credit downgrades come too late?

Essential Liberty

“The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era. … Post offices were once even more important than Eastman Kodak, and for a longer time, as the mail provided vital communications linking people and organizations across thousands of miles. But, today, technology has moved even further beyond the post office than it has beyond Eastman Kodak. The difference is that, although the Postal Service is technically a private business, its income doesn’t cover all its costs – and taxpayers are on the hook for the difference. Moreover, the government makes it illegal for anyone else to put anything into your mail box, even though you bought the mail box and it is your property. That means you don’t have the option to have some other private company deliver your mail. … A society in which some people make decisions, and other people are forced to pay the costs created by those decisions, is a society where a lot of decisions can be made despite their costs being greater than their benefits. … We cannot preserve everything that was once useful.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Re: The Left

“It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left – that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted – and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too. In a previous column, I wrote about Thomas Friedman making one of the classic anti-Semitic libels when he wrote that the reason the Senate and the House gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations was because ‘that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.’ How does a Jew write an anti-Semitic libel? Because he’s on the left. That was the reason Rep. Andre Carson said that members of Congress who support the Tea Party want to see blacks ‘hanging on a tree.’ Because he’s on the left. Leftists’ meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right. Those on the left need to do some soul-searching. Because as long as they continue to believe that people on the right are not merely wrong but vile, they will get increasingly mean. The problem for the left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the right as vile, it has to argue the issues.” –radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

The Gipper

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream – the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.” –Ronald Reagan

The Last Word

“While the political elite are focused on the Republican primary fight, the rest of America is focused on looking for (or keeping) a job; hoping the kids are actually learning something at school; despairing over, while staring at, their evaporating retirement accounts; and wondering … if anyone is actually watching the store. … Like it or not, Barack Obama is President of the United States. … In dealing with the Congress he went from completely ignoring the Republican Minority when Democrats controlled both Chambers, to completely ignoring the entire Branch by ruling via Executive Order and redefining the Constitution after the 2010 mid-term elections in which his policies and leadership style cost Democrats control of the U.S. House and broke the back of the near filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. In Obama’s America, your opponents are too disobedient and negotiations with them are too tiresome. … Rather than reduce the ‘recriminations’ he talked about, he has created more government agencies to watch over fewer growing businesses to institutionalize recriminations against economic growth. In Obama’s America, economic success is no longer something to be proud of, [it] is something to be embarrassed about, investigated for, and taxed on.” –political analyst Rich Galen

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team